


Assuage

by The_lazy_eye



Category: Scream (TV)
Genre: Because I like to pretend that shit show never happened, Coping with PTSD, Domestic girlfriends being in love, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Established Relationship, F/F, Guilt, Just some girlfriends being soft, Light Angst, Moving On, Post Season 2, Takes place probably sometime during college, no halloween special
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-10
Updated: 2019-06-10
Packaged: 2020-04-24 06:04:54
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,838
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19167313
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/The_lazy_eye/pseuds/The_lazy_eye
Summary: That’s the thing about trauma that no one ever tells you. It lingers with you. It stays. No matter how much therapy she’s done, no matter how much forgiveness she’s received, it’s never gone away. Not for her, not for any of them. There are still shadows in her eyes and in her face and in her bedroom at night when all the doors are locked and the closet light is on. She still clutches her hands too tight when someone with long hair and thick glasses passes her on the sidewalk. Her phone is on silent at all times. No exceptions.





	Assuage

The food on the stove simmers in a way that sounds like white noise. The pieces of chicken breast – cut into tiny, bite sized pieces – all jump around the pan. Small bubbles of oil well up and then pop like tiny bubbles on the top of a soda cup. Little pieces of garlic jump around, too. They add an aroma to the mixture, lighting up her olfactory senses with something that smells like home, something that smells like peace and quiet. A small pot of rice simmers on the backburner, left to be forgotten until the stove timer counts down to zero.

The sounds of dinner mingle with the overhead fan that’s running in a desperate attempt to diffuse the sensitive smoke alarm. It’s so finicky that she never really knows when it’s going to go off, so it’s better safe than sorry. Better safe than panic. The last time it went off she nearly blacked out from adrenaline. Brooke found her curled in the corner of her bathroom clutching a knife and sobbing. It wasn’t a banner day.

The smell of garlic and onion and everything else popping off in the pan wafts back through the back of the apartment and out through the windows. It’s nice, soothing almost. The smells of home cooked foods are something Audrey has only just started getting used to. For a long time, it was microwave pizzas and cereal and Hamburger Helper. Sometimes it was a meal cooked by someone else, friends or parents or classmates. Sometimes it was nothing at all. Actually, for a long time it was nothing at all. Guilt has a way of eating you alive until there’s nothing left but skin and bones and the bad choices you’ve made.

Her mother taught her to cook when she was little. It was never anything too complex, Audrey having been too young to retain how to cook full course meals, but the basics have stayed with her all these years. It was something they used to do together before the cancer took hold. Before the beginning of the end for Audrey’s entire world. They would chop veggies and whisk pancakes and eat brownie batter off of electric beaters. She taught Audrey to have fun, to make love with food, and to clean as she went. Maintenance was important in cooking, in life. Clean up the messes you make and do it swiftly and you will thank yourself later for making life just a little bit easier. God, she wishes she remembered that advice when it mattered most.

There’s something strange about the way her kitchen knives feel in her hands as she runs a sponge over the blade. The way the sharpening steel feels as it runs long the blade in cool, quick, calculated motions. It’s something Audrey isn’t sure she’ll ever get used to. Her therapist told her that she’s got two options with this: she can attempt to overcome the strong, awful emotions that settle in her chest when the blades hang heavy between her fingertips or she can find a way to move forward in life without ever having to wield a blade. There are ways, Audrey is sure of it, but she doesn’t want to run from the normalcy of growing up and moving on. She can’t justify it to herself.

There’s something deep inside of her chest that screams _if you run from this, you’re running from it all. If you run from this, you’re taking responsibility for everything._

She knows now that she isn’t responsible for it all but she can’t help but rebuild those same walls over and over and over again. She can’t help it.  

Once the chicken browns, Audrey grabs a bowl she’d set aside early containing an assortment of vegetables and in they go. The sizzling sound starts up hard and fresh and steam pours up from the bottom of the pain. It mingles with the breath around her mouth for only a moment before it’s sucked into the fan and deposited somewhere above her. It smells good in here. It smells like a home she’s never really had before. At least, not for a few years now.

The grief is mostly gone at this point. Now, it’s just a lingering shard of pain that sits in the back of her mind. It doesn’t hurt much, not unless she thinks too hard or remembers things she’d rather have forgotten. What the fuck is up with that, anyway? Why couldn’t she be one of those fortunate people who represses her trauma until there’s hardly a trace of it left inside of her? Why does _she_ have to carry it around with her? 

That’s the thing about trauma that no one ever tells you. It lingers with you. It stays. No matter how much therapy she’s done, no matter how much forgiveness she’s received, it’s never gone away. Not for her, not for any of them. There are still shadows in her eyes and in her face and in her bedroom at night when all the doors are locked and the closet light is on. She still clutches her hands too tight when someone with long hair and thick glasses passes her on the sidewalk. Her phone is on silent at all times. No exceptions.

It’s the little things that set her off. That set all of them off.  

The lid to the pan slides on and the steam cuts off. The noise dulls down to a far away static and then it’s just her in her kitchen, waiting. She’s hardly even cooking anymore. Just standing there, watching the lid to her pan cloud up and drip down into the simmering meal. On impulse, she grabs the handle of the pan and jostles it once, twice, just to shake up the contents, and then cuts the heat down to a soft medium.

The rice still has about eight minutes left, so she turns around and lets herself slide down onto the flood, back pressed against the door of the stove and knees bent at a ninety degree angle. It’s cooler down here, maybe by a whole five degrees, and she feels the way her tank top sticks to the skin of her neck and shoulders and chest. She was already sticky from the Georgia humidity, but tack on standing above an open stovetop for half an hour? Unbearable. Appalling. Downright unacceptable.

The metal from the stove door is cool on the back of her head. It’s relieving and it makes her eyes drift close at the dim sounds of dinner draw her into a hazy calm.

Well, not calm. Not really. It’s a desperate grab-bag at calm that doesn’t quite hit the mark. No, it’s more of a distraction than anything else. A sorry attempt at normalcy.

The gears in her from door turn, clunking in the interior workings of her deadbolt lock. The noise of it draws her eyes back open and she watches the knob turn slowly and click open. She knows who it is, but her heart still hammers in her chest. Desperately. Bone chillingly.

One tap comes to the door handle, then one to the door, and then a swift but gentle kick to the wood at the bottom – an unspoken code that whispers safety inside of her – and then the door opens. The first thing Audrey sees is the tip of one black van nudging into the apartment. Its followed by a slim pair of blue jeans traveling up to a dark sweater that’s shoulders have blond hair wisped across them.

“Audrey, hey,” Emma says as she steps inside and toes her shoes off. She shrugs her vans off and steps into the room. She’s got a thin smile on her face and small backs under her eyes as she hangs her set of keys up on the hooks next to the door. As soon as the door clicks shut, the deadbolt is turning and clicking into place. “It smells good in here.”

Audrey doesn’t answer her, she just looks up and returns a matching smile. Slowly, she raises her hand up and reaches it out to Emma, who crosses the small space between them to take it. she hoists Audrey up off the ground and gives her a slow once over. “What were you doing on the ground?”

“Cooking,” Audrey answers and their thin smiles turn into something thicker, something a little more genuine.

“Ah, yes. I see them do it like that on Food Network,” Emma laughs and Audrey laughs, too. It’s light and airy and it pulls Audrey out of wherever she’d been. Emma has a habit of doing that. Of making Audrey feel more human than she has in her entire life. With Emma, she doesn’t have to feel scared. She doesn’t have to feel like the monster she sees in her nightmares.

“Duh, it’s the classic Cook On The Floor technique. From down there I have a vantage point of the entire kitchen.”

“You can’t even see the food!”

“They say when you lose one of your senses, the others get stronger,” Audrey states and then points to her ear for emphasis. Emma just throws her head back and laughs a full kind of laugh that fill her with love. It’s then that the entire kitchen seems to explode into waves of color and life. The cream counter turns golden and the brown cabinets drip like honey in the sunset coming through their window. The plants in the sill become viridescent, the buds of their flowers melting into candy colored gum drop bubblegum and Audrey pulls Emma close by the waist. She leans in quick and captures her lips in what can only be felt, not described.

When they break apart, they don’t separate by more than a couple inches. Emma sucks in a sharp breath of air and sighs it into the space between them. “What was that?”

“What?” Audrey asks, voice rising in a teasing way. Her face hurts from the smile that’s taken up the vacancy of her previous expressions. “I’m not allowed to kiss my girlfriend?”

“No, I just –” Emma starts but she’s cut off when the timer on the stove counts down to zero and sings. Audrey gives her a quick peck on the lips and turns around to face the stove. She moves both the rice and the pan off of the burners and onto the cooler parts of the stovetop. Emma’s arms reflexively come around her waist and she settles her chin on Audrey’s shoulder. “I love you, Audrey.”

“I love you, too, Em,” Audrey whispers. Their dinner mixes together in the pan as Audrey pours the rice in.

The past becomes more and more distant when Emma kisses the side of her neck. It doesn’t feel like it’s closing in, it doesn’t feel like it’s burning her up from the inside out. Right now, in this moment, she is present. She is here. And no one can take that away from them.

**Author's Note:**

> I'll never abandon this pairing, will I? No, probably not. They just bring about such a strong emotion in my chest. 
> 
> Anyway I rewatched the series again this weekend and I needed to write some stuff about them. I might have another fic in me that I'll get to this summer. I just love them so much. They deserved so much and in my mind they're happy and in love and healing together far away from Lakewood. It's canon. You can't take that away from me. 
> 
> This is not beta read. It is just an emotional dump of words.


End file.
